Directed by Raul Ruiz. In French with English subtitles. (Not rated. 124 minutes. At the Lumiere.)

Because Marcello Mastroianni created so many beautiful and touching lives on the screen, his last film, "Three Lives and Only One Death," takes on a painful irony with his death yesterday in Paris.

Among the ironies, of course, is that the film opens only a day after his death and deals with death as both pretense and reality.

"Three Lives and Only One Death," filled with absurdist refer ences, was written by its director, Chilean-born Raul Ruiz, for Mastroianni. Mastroianni's co-star in one segment of the film is his daughter, Chiara Mastroianni, whose real-life mother is Catherine Deneuve.

"Three Lives" opens today at the Lumiere in San Francisco, Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley, the Camera 3 in San Jose and the Aquarius in Palo Alto. It's in French with English subtitles.

The movie, set in Paris, is dense, surrealistic and often bewildering, but Mastroianni, who plays four roles in as many stories, deliv ers the magic that anchors the whole. Although he was 71 when the film was made, Italy's most famous star looked full of vigor. His comic acting is characteristically mixed with hints of sorrow.

The film's four distinct stories are interlaced with sometimes baffling fantasy sequences. The tales, two of them based on Nathaniel Hawthorne stories, come across as miniatures viewed from a distance. Sometimes the distance is so great and Ruiz's imagistic games are so dense that it all becomes confusing. But though it may be hard to grasp on a rational level, somehow the emotions grab hold.

The first story finds Mastroianni as Mateo Strano, a traveling salesman who leaves his wife (Marisa Paredes). Twenty years later, at a cafe across the street from their old place, he strikes up a friendship with her new husband and explains that he's been hiding across the street the whole time with strange, supernatural beings.

AS A BEGGAR

In the second tale, Mastroianni plays Georges Vickers, a professor of anthropology who decides on the spur of the moment to become a homeless beggar on the streets of Paris. He befriends a kinky street hooker (Anna Galiena) and is shocked to discover her consuming love for the writings of Carlos Castaneda and the revelation of a double life she leads.

The third tale is about a young couple (Chiara Mastroianni and Melvil Poupaud) who inherit a huge mansion on the condition that they keep the butler (Mastroianni), who slowly reveals his true identity.

The final story is about an intense, successful business tycoon, played by Mastroianni, who is suddenly visited by an imaginary family.

Paris is the always enchanting backdrop for "Three Lives." Ruiz is obviously toying with layers of the same person throughout this film, and the tales bear the influence of Spanish director Luis Bunuel and Ruiz's experiences as a Chilean expatriate in France. The French in the film is frequently spoken in foreign accents, and one of the characters (the hooker's strange husband, played by Jacques Pieiller) speaks with a German accent punctuated by stutters.

INDELIBLE STAMP

It's a little sad that Mastroianni's last film won't be more accessible to viewers. But "Three Lives and Only One Death" carries with it the indelible stamp of a great actor who instinctively understands that realities frequently blur into fantasy, and that only a flicker of difference exists between the comic and the tragic.